The Trip to St. Lucia

Ok, so I’ve tried to write this darn blog entry about our trip to St. Lucia a half-dozen times already, and it always ends up too long. But, I’ll give it another shot… bear with me. And while we’re at it… be warned that it’s going to be long. Very long. And all text ‘cuz I don’t have my pics online at the moment.

Trip: November 10 – 17, 2007
Destination: St. Lucia
Resort: Sandals Halcyon Beach
Review in a nutshell: Beautiful Island. Avoid this resort like the plague (actually, you might end up with the plague…)

I can hear you now… “Whaaaaaaaaaa??? But it’s a Sandals!!!” Yeah, that’s pretty much what we thought, too. Had our opinion been based purely on this resort, Sandals would never get another penny of our money. However, having seen two other of their properties while in St. Lucia, we’re almost willing to give them another chance. Maybe.

We booked this trip last-minute. Fairly literally. We decided on November 3rd that we were going and booked on November 4th, to leave November 10th. We chose this resort based on the website for it… the text and images on that site (having examined the site more closely since we returned, the inconsistencies in information between pages and the “sound stage” look to some of the pictures should perhaps have set off the suspicion alarms, but at the time, we had other things on our mind). Of the properties on St. Lucia, this looked like the best fit for us.

We’re not beach people, per se. The website said this beach was pristine white sand beach. Nothing about this beach in reality tempted us to become beach people. What the site failed to mention was that this is a PUBLIC beach. As such, setting foot NEAR the beach (you didn’t even have to go ONTO it) resulted in being accosted by local beach bums, peddlers and drug dealers. Yes, drug dealers. Nice, no? I should also point out at this juncture that these people were also benefiting from the all-inclusive bar aspect of the resort free-of-charge thanks to the resort’s bar-tenders. Maybe that wouldn’t have bothered me so much if D and I were drinkers *shrug*. But getting back to the beach.. it was short, dirty brown, and ‘pristine’ is not a word I’d remotely consider applying to it.

The beaches at the other two properties, on the other hand were beautiful… and private.

We booked a “Luxury Ocean View” room. It was dark, dank, had a crack running most of the height of one wall, had no screen in the bathroom window, had no doors on the ‘closet’, had an elderly ceiling fan we were afraid to turn above ‘low’ in case it fell on the bed, and the window A/C which was the only way to control the dank smell was constantly being turned off by housekeeping. As for the ocean view, if you stood in exactly the right spot and the wind was cooperating, you could see a small sliver of blue that might have been water. Maybe. Primarily our view was of our overhung patio (a little pruning goes a long way with clematis), and pedestrian traffic between the other rooms and the main complex (lobby, taxis, busses, restaurants, main pool, administrative buildings, gift shop, etc.). I was particularly fond of the parades of housekeeping carts, luggage carts and ice carts. Oh yes, did I forget to mention that the ice was kept in insulated bins scattered around the gardens? Located every 500 metres to make up for the lack of refrigerators in the rooms.

The site mentioned 24 hour food availability. Nope. No room service. Breakfast from 7:30 – 11:00, lunch from 12:30 – 2, dinner starts at 6:00. From 10 – 5:00, I think, and again from 10 – 3 a.m. (I think… I’d need to confirm those times) there WAS a “grill” open… primarily for it’s bar, but there were offerings of seafood pizza (scary), and a few grillable items (burgers of questionable food safety and hot dogs, primarily). There was afternoon tea at the lagoon pool.

The pools bore no resemblance to the website. The food was mediocre at best (and it didn’t get to ‘best’ too often). The service was abysmal. There were feral cats with the run of the main restaurant (and the rest of the resort, but they stayed off my dining table elsewhere), birds crapping on the tables. Every time we went for a meal something was missing from our table… napkins, glasses, cutlery, salt shaker (not that it would have done us any good anyway… exposed 24/7 to the humid sea air had turned it into a salt-lick more than a salt shaker)… and almost always missing from our table, no matter how many times it was requested: D’s morning coffee. Maybe I have unrealistic expectations, but I figure if you ask someone if they’d like coffee, tea, or a mimosa… and they say they’d like coffee… it’s reasonable to expect that coffee would be forthcoming, no? Apparently… no. There’s no alcohol in coffee, so why serve it? Of course, if you’re not going to serve it, perhaps you shouldn’t offer it, either.

And then there were the bugs. I don’t particularly like thinking about the bugs. I mean, I recognize that bugs exist… that they’re a bigger issue in humid areas… and that I am the preferred snack food. But the biting started as soon as we stepped off the mini-bus from the airport (oh yes… the trip from Toronto to the resort and back again is a whole other story for another entry)… and didn’t stop until we left. And, worst of all, I woke up some mornings with more bites than I’d had when I went to bed *shudder*.

I think our favourite spot at the resort was the shuttle bus to the Grande St. Lucian. And only because it took us to the resort that DID look like the one on the website. And had food I could eat (allergies to shellfish, peppers, and grapefruit meant that I couldn’t eat most things… including most of the fruit due to cross-contamination). Honestly, access to this resort is the only reason we’d even consider giving Sandals a second chance. The service was great… the public areas looked awesome… (the pool tables were indoors)… they’ve got a pub… and they room keys are key cards (as opposed to our resort where we discovered at checkout that all the rooms have the exact same key… thank goodness we’re security paranoid and deadbolted and chained the door at night… and locked up or hid our valuables when we weren’t in the room).

So yeah… While I’d recommend the island to beach bums, adventure tourists, and just folks who like a pretty view, I wouldn’t recommend that particular resort to anyone I liked even a little bit.